It's Friday and I'm so glad. This has been a long week....state testing is done and my kids worked really hard. It's a shame that so much hinges on their performance on these tests. There's no way that a test can show the amount of confidence a child has obtained or the number of new friends they've acquired. Those are important things. The test also doesn't show how much children are hurting and the kind of situations they come from. Sometimes it feels like we're treating them all like cattle. And they're not. Each one is special...has special strengths, special weaknesses, and special home life circumstances. Those are not things that can be tested. But no one asked me what I thought when creating No Child Left Behind. Sorry if I sound so bitter.....but I have to say-This legislation has really taken the fun and creativity out of teaching. It has added stress to the students, the parents, and the teachers. But it doesn't appear to be going away any time soon. So I guess if I want to stay in the teaching field, I better find a way to live with it......
And I will.
Because each child is special to me......unlike cattle.
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1 comment:
AMEN! I feel the same way! Georgia just finished CRCT two weeks ago and we just got our results back. IN our state, the kids have to pass the reading test in 3rd grade to go to fourth grade. There are all sorts of rules like that now that were not in place when I started teaching 9 years ago. It is really sad that they are measured by this and not by their annual performance.
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